National Geographic Tour of Lower Yukon

Hey, we had a fantastic voyage on the Lower Yukon River, around 80 miles worth!!! This a shot of us leaving Emmonak. May be the last time we get a chance to leave the village. We netted salmon, viewed a large area up river from Emmonak, saw a seal hunt,visited the summer fishing camp, met some some Yupiks that were so friendly I could have sworn I was in Oklahoma or Arkansas, saw an expanse of Tundra, and road miles and miles with the fresh Alaska wind in our faces.


Here is our crew three wonderful people from the Watksa family, a Texas teacher, a Phillipino teacher(planned and arranged the trip, a Colorado teacher, and a new teacher mentor who is native of Hawii. Oh! that is me behind the camera with Susan. This boat cost $18,000 with the motor costing $16,000. The right to net fish salmon cost in the neighborhood of $20,oo0. This aluminum boat really moves on the river water. It had a four-stroke engine for fuel economy. I think we purchased $300 of fuel at $5.oo per gallon and used probably three fourths if the total.
Here is the net that was cast into the river. The net has a floater side, which you see and a weight side in the water, of course. We would leave it out for around 30 minutes while drifting down the huge river. Then the net was pulled in with the fish tangled in the net. The net could have no fish or 100 fish. Our first try netted 10 fish and the second got us 7 more salmon. The species were silver and king salmon. If Oklahoma bass from a farm pond they would have been humongus, but as silvers go average, and kings small.


Here are some of our catch. King salmon have kind of a snaggle overbite with dark freckles on their backs. Silver are, right--- silver. We got home at 2 am and had to get the catch up to our houses. We wrapped them in freezer paper and put them in a freezer each of us have in our houses. I baked one of them today. We had a get together for dinner and consumed it. It was very good. Hope I got a lot of omega 3 out of the deal, cause I was sure tired out all day at school. The wonderful trip was worth a little fatigue. We were having meetings and working in our rooms.

Sunset was around 11pm. A person has to watch it or you work too much. Susan and I haven't been watching the clock enough, but operating like a couple of Oklahoma farmers, working from sun to sun. I can only put five pictures on at a time, to I will tell the rest of the story later.